Showing results for: “digital markets act”
Antitrust Enforcement in Reverse: Getting Efficiencies Backwards
A century ago Congress enacted the Clayton Act, which prohibits acquisitions that may substantially lessen competition. For years, the antitrust enforcement Agencies looked at only one part of the ledger – the potential for price increases. Agencies didn’t take into account the potential efficiencies in cost savings, better products, services, and innovation. One of the major ... Antitrust Enforcement in Reverse: Getting Efficiencies Backwards
Newsflash! Commercial contracts are often confidential (but that doesn’t make them anticompetitive)
Microsoft and its allies (the Microsoft-funded trade organization FairSearch and the prolific Google critic Ben Edelman) have been highly critical of Google’s use of “secret” contracts to license its proprietary suite of mobile apps, Google Mobile Services, to device manufacturers. I’ve written about this at length before. As I said previously, In order to argue ... Newsflash! Commercial contracts are often confidential (but that doesn’t make them anticompetitive)
TOTM Blog Symposium Thursday, Aug. 1: Regulating the Regulators–Guidance for the FTC’s Section 5 Unfair Methods of Competition Authority
Section 5 of the FTC Act permits the agency to take enforcement actions against companies that use “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” or that employ “unfair methods of competition.” The Act doesn’t specify what these terms mean, instead leaving that determination to the FTC itself. In the 1980s, under intense pressure from Congress, the Commission ... TOTM Blog Symposium Thursday, Aug. 1: Regulating the Regulators–Guidance for the FTC’s Section 5 Unfair Methods of Competition Authority
Does the DOJ’s Approach in Gonzalez Point the Way Toward Section 230 Reform?
Later next month, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Gonzalez v. Google LLC, a case that has drawn significant attention and many bad takes regarding how Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act should be interpreted. Enacted in the mid-1990s, when the Internet as we know it was still in its infancy, ... Does the DOJ’s Approach in Gonzalez Point the Way Toward Section 230 Reform?
Past Use of Reconciliation in Congress: Correcting the Record
As predicted, President Obama has called upon Congress to enact his health insurance reform plan using the reconciliation process, which allows the Senate to avoid a filibuster attempt and would permit enactment of the legislation without any Republican support. As I mentioned the other day, the reconciliation process was created to deal with budget-related bills, ... Past Use of Reconciliation in Congress: Correcting the Record
Legal Status of the SEC’s Manual of Publicly Available Telephone Interpretations
Since 1997, the SEC’s Manual of Publicly Available Telephone Interpretations has been available online (see here). It is also searchable on Westlaw (see the FSEC-MISC database). The manual contains a bevy of interpretations of various SEC regulations. As to legal status of these interpretations, the manual states as follows: The responses discussed in this manual ... Legal Status of the SEC’s Manual of Publicly Available Telephone Interpretations
The Market for Speech Governance: Free Speech Strikes Back?
The tentatively pending sale of Twitter to Elon Musk has been greeted with celebration by many on the right, along with lamentation by some on the left, regarding what it portends for the platform’s moderation policies. Musk, for his part, has announced that he believes Twitter should be a free-speech haven and that it needs ... The Market for Speech Governance: Free Speech Strikes Back?
Net neutrality and Trinko
Commentators who see Trinko as an impediment to the claim that antitrust law can take care of harmful platform access problems (and thus that prospective rate regulation (i.e., net neutrality) is not necessary), commit an important error in making their claim–and it is a similar error committed by those who advocate for search neutrality regulation, as ... Net neutrality and Trinko
Hey- That’s Robert Monks!!!
I needed a catchy title, to compete with Mann’s title below. I could find no way to work “crack whore” into my title, however. But I figured mentioning Robert Monks – shareholder activist qua shareholder primacy radical – would have a small bit of the same impact. (Mind you, Robert Monks is a very very ... Hey- That’s Robert Monks!!!
Ovation Reconsidered: A Response to Commissioner Leary
I was very pleased to thumb through the newest version of Antitrust Magazine and see a TOTM post get some attention. Its always nice to be cited and have folks take the time to respond to your work — or in this case, blog post. Its even more tickling when the person doing the responding ... Ovation Reconsidered: A Response to Commissioner Leary
Permissionless innovation does not mean “no contracts required”
UPDATE: I’ve been reliably informed that Vint Cerf coined the term “permissionless innovation,” and, thus, that he did so with the sorts of private impediments discussed below in mind rather than government regulation. So consider the title of this post changed to “Permissionless innovation SHOULD not mean ‘no contracts required,'” and I’ll happily accept that ... Permissionless innovation does not mean “no contracts required”
Can the SEC Exempt Small Companies from Sarbanes-Oxley 404? (Part 2)
Back on the first day of TOTM’s existence, I raised the question of whether the SEC has the authority to exempt small companies from SOX 404 compliance as proposed by the SEC Advisory Committee on Smaller Public Companies (see here). I stated that “[i]t’s not clear to me that [the SEC has] the legal authority ... Can the SEC Exempt Small Companies from Sarbanes-Oxley 404? (Part 2)
